


tell me i've got it wrong somehow

by percasbeths



Series: 12 Days of Percabeth [4]
Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: Angst and Fluff, Canon Compliant, F/M, Not Proofread, its a happy ending, mostly angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2020-12-17
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:48:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28119450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/percasbeths/pseuds/percasbeths
Summary: It’s an odd thought, Annabeth thinks, to realize that the person you love may not feel the same way anymore. She doesn’t quite know when exactly it hits her, but once it does, it never leaves her mind.They had plans--solid, set in stone 3 AM thoughts that they’d discuss while wrapped up in one another: graduate college, move back to New York, find stable jobs, marriage and kids to come. That was the plan, but somewhere along the line it changed. She could check them off in her head: graduate college, check. Move back to New York, check. Find stable jobs, check. After that, she’s unsure.She’d always thought Percy would propose after college. It’s not like she was in any rush to get married or anything, but based on the way he’d talk about their lives together the thought always lingered in her head. Then they graduated, moved, and settled in, and now they were two years post college and there was not a single mention of marriage anymore. And it hurt.or, sometimes people need to fall apart to fall back together
Relationships: Annabeth Chase/Percy Jackson
Series: 12 Days of Percabeth [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2055423
Comments: 29
Kudos: 166





	tell me i've got it wrong somehow

**Author's Note:**

> title from "tolerate it" by taylor swift

_ I sit and watch you reading with your head low _

_ I wake and watch you breathing with your eyes closed _

_ I sit and watch you _

_ I notice everything you do or don't do _

_ You're so much older and wiser, and I _

_ I wait by the door like I'm just a kid _

_ Use my best colors for your portrait _

_ Lay the table with the fancy shit _

_ And watch you tolerate it _

_ If it's all in my head, tell me now _

_ Tell me I've got it wrong somehow _

_ I know my love should be celebrated _

_ But you tolerate it _

  
  
  


It’s an odd thought, Annabeth thinks, to realize that the person you love may not feel the same way anymore. She doesn’t quite know when exactly it hits her, but once it does, it never leaves her mind.

They had plans--solid, set in stone 3 AM thoughts that they’d discuss while wrapped up in one another: graduate college, move back to New York, find stable jobs, marriage and kids to come. That was the plan, but somewhere along the line it changed. She could check them off in her head: graduate college, check. Move back to New York, check. Find stable jobs, check. After that, she’s unsure.

She’d always thought Percy would propose after college. It’s not like she was in any rush to get married or anything, but based on the way he’d talk about their lives together the thought always lingered in her head. Then they graduated, moved, and settled in, and now they were two years post college and there was not a single mention of marriage anymore. And it hurt.

Somewhere along the lines, Percy let her go. Whether it was intentional or not, she didn’t know, but she knows she’s no longer his person. Their days turned from kisses in bed and lazy mornings to the rush of not having time for one another as they got ready for work, from cooking dinner for one another and dancing in the kitchen to Annabeth setting the table and Percy barely giving her a thank you, from cuddling before bed to barely even hugging. 

She hates it--the feeling of helplessness and hurt that comes from Percy slipping away. She loves him: she has since they were 12 and that feeling never will go away. Him, on the other hand, has become a stranger she lives with: Someone who disappears to work long hours and comes to the apartment and barely acknowledges her existence. 

It’s all too much, far too much for her to handle anymore, so she snaps. It’s another late night, and usually Annabeth knows they would be watching movies together, maybe baking, but not anymore. Now, these nights consist of curling up on opposite sofas and being engrossed in separate worlds. She watches him over the edge of the pages of her book, watches the way his fingers move against his keyboard as he wraps up leftover work from the office that he hadn’t gotten done. She should swallow back the words, she should just get up and go to bed like she usually does, but she doesn’t. 

Something about feeling like a child, feeling like she was holding him back, hurts her, and she can’t swallow it anymore.

“You don’t love me anymore.”

It’s quiet enough that he could ignore it if he wanted, but based on the way his fingers freeze on the keyboard, she knows he heard it. “What?”

She lowers the book in her hands but doesn’t quite meet his eyes, “You just--you’re not here, Percy. You haven’t been here. I mean, yeah, you’re here, but you’re not. You know?”

“Annabeth, that’s not--”

“True?” She cuts him off, and she finally looks him in the eyes for the first time in a long time. It hurts, she thinks, to think that looking into his eyes once felt like home. She exhales a breath, “I thought--I thought us getting to this point would mean more. You used to talk about this point in our lives for hours, but now you don’t.”

He’s staring at her with an expression she can’t quite read, and for some reason, that tears at the hole in her chest even more. He doesn’t speak, and Annabeth takes it as an opportunity to plow through, “I just--if you don’t want to be here anymore, you don’t have to be. I get it, you don’t have to to stay.” 

“Annabeth, I-” 

“Please don’t feel obligated to stay.” She cuts him off with a whisper, and rather than fighting, Percy studies her for a moment. She practically shrinks into the sofa, hating the way his eyes are locked into hers. She swallows, exhales a breath once, twice, then reopens her book. 

She tries to act like she’s not broken when she wakes up and sees his empty drawers.

  
  


_ While you were out building other worlds, where was I? _

_ Where's that man who'd throw blankets over my barbed wire? _

_ I made you my temple, my mural, my sky _

_ Now I'm begging for footnotes in the story of your life _

_ Drawing hearts in the byline _

  
  
  


It takes her two weeks to accept the empty apartment. Takes her two weeks to deep clean, to force herself to put effort into her appearance. They don’t talk--he doesn’t send her a single text and she can’t bring herself to reach out either, even when she’s sobbing and mentally beating herself up over the fact that she’d practically forced him out. It’s for the best, though, because he fell out of love for her.

That, she thinks, is the most painful part of this all. The fact that Percy Jackson--the same person who’d risked a quest for her, who’d rejected immortality, who’d said she was his anchor, who fell into Tartarus for her--no longer loved her anymore. The thought haunts her, the fact that he probably regrets all those actions hurts her, and she lets the pain swallow her whole. 

They were best friends once, weren’t they? He was Percy, after all: the kid she’d emailed excitedly during the school year, the person she’d spar with and battle during camp, the one person who knew her inside and out. Somehow, though, all those things make it hurt even more. After all, if the person who knew you best stopped loving you, then who’s to say anyone else will?

She forces herself to go to work--she’d used up all her sick days and couldn’t risk getting in trouble. She hates coming back to the apartment, refusing to call it home anymore. She’d discovered long ago that her home was never a place, but rather a person. Now, though, she no longer has that. 

As she jams her key into the door and unlocks, she almost misses the letter on the doormat. A small envelope that she knows was hand delivered, and she ignores the trembling of her hand as she picks it up. She knows that handwriting all too well, and she’s quick to drop everything and settle onto the sofa, tearing at the envelope with her brain moving a mile a minute.

_ Annabeth, _

_ You’d once said something about how you thought letters were romantic, I think after your rewatch of Little Women, and I’d told myself one day I’d write you a letter: Something romantic and beautiful and something you deserve, but you know I’m not good with words. I never have been, have I? And now here we are. _

_ I love you. I haven’t said it enough lately and I’m so, so sorry. I ~~don’t~~ never stopped loving you, okay? Gods, I wish this wasn’t the letter you were getting, but I just needed you to know I’m in love with you, Annabeth. I will never not love you: You’re my best friend, you’re everything I want in life and more.  _

_ I’m sorry I stopped telling you I love you. I’m sorry I let life get in the way of us. I’m sorry I stopped kissing you and being your best friend, and instead focused too much on setting our future up. I think that was my problem: That I kept looking ahead and ignored what was right in front of me.  _

_ I miss you. Yeah, we’ve only been apart two weeks, but I’ve missed you for longer than that: I miss coming home to you, miss baking for you and seeing your eyes light up, miss the way you’d settle around me when we watched movies together. I miss when you’d fall asleep on the couch and I’d carry you to bed. You always woke up, and I knew that, but I liked the feeling of you burying yourself in my chest. I liked having you around me.  _

_ I love you. Always. And I’m so sorry I made you think otherwise, Wise Girl. _

_ I said once that I’d never let you go, but somehow I did. And if you decide to give me the chance to love you again, I’ll do it right.  _

_~~Seaweed Brain~~ _

_ Percy _

_ ps check the nightstand drawer--the one that was on my side.  _

She’d thought she was done crying. She figured the tears had expired long ago, yet she clutches the paper to her chest and bawls--loud, heart-wrenching sobs that tear her open as though she hadn’t spent weeks forcing stitches through her chest. She doesn’t know how long she sits there with the letter in her grip, but by the time she stands up, she’s dizzy and drained and feels as though she’s seconds from collapsing. She ignores it, though, and instead pushes herself to the bedroom. 

Her eyes are fixed on the nightstand drawer, but she forces herself to change before she settles into the bed. She knows it’s counterproductive, yet she slips into one of Percy’s hoodies--one that she’d kept hidden in her drawer because it was her favorite: the first one he’d gotten from the New Rome swim team--dark purple with the university logo in the front corner and the back printed with his last name. He’d realized long ago that it was missing, yet said nothing. He knew it was hers now. 

She swallows back the tears as she opens his nightstand drawer. When he left, she thought he’d emptied himself from the apartment. It took her a week to realize he’d left enough behind to remind Annabeth he was there--a bottle of his aftershave, his favorite mug, old notebooks from classes he’d hated but Annabeth had taken with him, polaroids of the two of them that he’d written notes on. Now, as she stares into the nightstand drawer, there’s another wave of pain that hits her. 

It was a drawer for her, she realizes, as she looks into the messy pile buried inside: miscellaneous notes Annabeth had written for him, sticky note doodles she’d drawn randomly during college, the first grocery list she’d written for him after they moved in together, various polaroids and disposable camera photos of the two of them that Annabeth had claimed she’d hated. She laughs at the site, pushing through the piles and uncovering the more sentimental things: sketches she’d drawn of a dream home she’d had for the two of them, a list of baby names they’d written together when it was four in the morning and they were delusional off lack of sleep, printed versions of some of their old emails to one another, an old jewelry catalogue magazine that Annabeth had used to circle ring cuts she’d liked. It had been a joke, but when he’d found it he responded with a kiss on the head and put it away. As she sifts through the drawer, her fingers almost miss the small box shoved in the corner. 

Her entire body freezes as she pulls the box out, hands shaking and tears welling in her eyes before she can even properly stare at the piece of jewelry inside. It was a ring--the very one Annabeth had circled twice. She knows she’s crying once again, knows that maybe she should finally pick up the stupid phone and call him, but she can’t.

She cries herself to sleep this time around.

  
  


_ If it's all in my head, tell me now _

_ Tell me I've got it wrong somehow _

_ I know my love should be celebrated _

_ But you tolerate it _

  
  


Annabeth hates the snow. 

It’s a given fact, most people that know her know that’s how she feels. So, when she wakes up to a blanket of snow in the streets of NYC, she has to force herself out of the warmth of the apartment and to work. 

Enough time has passed for the pain of losing Percy has become a throb in the background. She’d never reached out--too scared for what he may say and instead let him blend into the background. The ring sits on a chain around her neck, something hidden from everyone else but so, so prominent against her skin. 

She almost cries of joy when her manager lets her know the office is closing down early, a sigh of relief leaving her instead as she tugs on her jacket and beanie. She knows it’s pointless to hope for warmth given the fact that she’s in a pencil skirt with sheer tights, but it’s hopefulness as she makes her way out the glass doors of the office building and into the snowy streets.

She almost misses him, but once she spots him, it’s like she can’t breathe. Percy, in black skinny jeans, his puffer jacket, and a beanie Annabeth had gotten him years ago. He looks beautiful, she thinks--dark hair and bright eyes and standing with his hands in his pockets and she wants to hug him, so, so bad.

“Percy.” She breathes his name out, taking a hesitant step towards him. She’s grateful the street is empty for once, allowing her to forget about the rest of the world and focus on him. 

“You, um, you hate snowstorms alone.” He says, a breath leaving him, “I didn’t want you to be alone.”

Annabeth falls silent, her cheeks burning despite the cold wind surrounding them. He takes a step forward, “I miss you, ‘Beth.”

She hates the way she’s frozen, the way there are so many words jumbled in her brain that she can’t get out. Percy doesn’t wait for a response, though, and instead takes another step, “And I love you, in case that got lost somewhere along the lines. I love you, I’ve loved you for so long and these past weeks without you have hurt me to the point where I know I never want to live without you. You--you have me, you’ve had me since we were 12 and you’ll always have me.”

He’s in front of her now, close enough that she can see the melting snowflakes that settled on his beanie. He exhales, his voice dropping an octave, “Please have me.”

She disregards all the words on the tip of her tongue as she leans up and kisses him, her hands cupping his face and tugging him down to her height. His skin is freezing, and she knows her hands probably are too, but she ignores the shiver of her skin as he returns the kiss. His hands find her waist, wrapping around her and she takes him in.

She’s freezing, he’s here, and she’s home. 

**Author's Note:**

> yell at me on tumblr!! percasbeths !!


End file.
